There is a lot of coverage in the media at the moment over the resignation of the UK's ambassador to the EU and what it all means. I have been expecting job losses to be a big part of the Brexit story, but this particular one is happening sooner than I was thinking. I have to confess I had no idea we even had an ambassador to the EU and I remain confused as to what exactly he would do.
Well lots of people who are obviously better informed than I am think it is important, so I suppose it must be. But I do work with EU regulations a lot of the time and keep an eye on how they develop so I do have some kind of idea about how they work on a day to day basis. I don't know what the top level get up to, but there are people who do stuff that matters. A good example is a regulation called REACH, which has to do with the safety of chemicals.
A lot of those of us who keep an eye on these things noticed was that it had the capacity to be a very protectionist bit of legislation. It effectively gives the EU the right to withold access to the EU market unless a company can produce a pile of data. In practice it hasn't been used to protect EU industries, but it certainly could be. This was something that was mildly interesting when Britain was in the EU. Now we face the prospect of being outside it, it is rather alarming. A lot will depend on the individual actions of the actual people enforcing the regulations. That those people will soon not be British, and will have no incentive to take British interests into account might be very damaging to a lot of British people's livelihoods. But it won't get into the papers.
No comments:
Post a Comment